In the above video, NBC's Matt Lauer introduces John Ziegler, saying he has been working on a documentary about the Joe Paterno scandal for almost a year. Ziegler interviewed Jerry Sandusky in prison, and shares some clips from the interview in the segment. Ziegler wrote a "preemptive strike" open letter to the media yesterday, and he tells Lauer he wrote it because he knows the media, "and I know I'm gonna get attacked from everybody because nobody wants the truth here." Ziegler said his ultimate goal is to "get Joe Paterno, who he feels was "railroaded", his day in court," and that he is trying to get at the truth of the matter. Deadline's Mike Fleming Jr. posted the video today, mentioning Brian De Palma's upcoming Paterno/Sandusky project, Happy Valley. Fleming suggests that the team behind Happy Valley will face challenges similar to those of last year's Zero Dark Thirty.

Fleming wrote: "While Lauer couldn’t match the superb interview Bob Costas did when Sandusky was dumb enough to get on the phone before his trial (Sandusky did not testify on his own behalf and was convicted of crimes that will keep him behind bars the rest of his life), Lauer certainly injected a lot of skepticism in interviewing the filmmaker who is widely described as a conservative who made an unabashedly positive film about Sarah Palin and whose work has been disavowed by the Paterno family. While it is creepy to hear Sandusky from behind bars in any capacity, it will be interesting how the continued reporting influences Paterno’s legacy. As well as Happy Valley, which in a way finds itself in a challenge similar to the one faced by the makers of Zero Dark Thirty. De Palma, Pacino and cohorts are also trying to make a permanent screen document out of a story that keeps changing, where there’s endless spin from partisan parties, and one that will continue to evolve when Penn State higher-ups go on trial."

R.I.P. JAROSLAV 'JERRY' GEBRARTIST HAD LONG HOLLYWOOD CAREER, WORKED ON 'SCARFACE'

Deadline reported this week that Jaroslav “Jerry” Gebr, a highly sought-after artist who worked in film and television for over 50 years, passed away last month at the age of 86, after a long illness. It was during his time at Universal Studios that Gebr, according to Thomas Gebr, worked on Brian De Palma's Scarface, presumably painting the portrait on display in the still above. Gebr may have done more than just portrait work on Scarface, as well, since he could mimic many styles, and also did murals, story boards, and various types of illustrations. He was still at Universal when De Palma and Al Pacino re-teamed for Carlito's Way at that studio.

Gebr is said to have been commissioned to paint replicas of beloved works of art for many in Hollywood. "They’d put the originals in safe storage and hang Jerry’s versions on the wall," his son-in-law Kevin McMahon told Deadline. "Nobody could ever tell the difference."

In 1966, Gebr painted a full-scale replica of Michelangelo´s Sistine Chapel for the film Shoes of the Fisherman. That same year, he created paintings for the pilot episode of his friend Rod Serling's Night Gallery (for which the Deadline obituary states that Gebr is perhaps best known). Gebr also did the memorable Norman Rockwell-ish titles and story chapter works for George Roy Hill's The Sting. According to Gebr.art, he painted a western scene on a semi-truck trailer in Smokey And The Bandit, and completed portrait work for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, "and all works delivered within a film production window of one to two weeks." Gebr also worked on David Lynch's Dune, and Robert Wise's The Sound Of Music, among countless others.

'PASSION' LIMITED RELEASE JUNE 7AS LISTED ON SEVERAL MOVIE SITES; RECEIVES 'R' RATING FROM MPAALooks like eOne is making some progress on getting Brian De Palma's Passion into U.S. theaters this summer. Yesterday, Rope Of Silicon's Brad Brevet noted that all ten films rated this week by the MPAA received R ratings, including Passion, which was given an R "for sexual content, language and some violence." Meanwhile, perhaps not coincidentally, several movie sites, such as Movie Insider, ComingSoon.Net, Rotten Tomatoes, and The Numbers are listing June 7 2013 as the release date for Passion. The latter three sites note that it will be a "limited" release that day, meaning it probably won't be in enough theaters to compete head-to-head with M. Night Shyamalan's After Earth (with Will Smith), or the Vince Vaughn/Owen Wilson comedy The Internship, but it will be out and about, and will hopefully go wide at some point.

Passion opened today in Hong Kong and in Greece. South China Morning Post's Andrew Sun is not impressed, complaining about the film's use of dream sequences, and saying that "if you enjoy trashy kitsch so stupefyingly bad it is entertainingly good, Brian De Palma's latest fetish thriller is a ripe, aromatic cheese of a Showgirls piquancy."

Horrorant's John Hatzopoulos took a while to warm up to Rachel McAdam's performance in the film, and really liked Karoline Herfurth's. He notes that the exaggerated interpretations of the actors in the slower first parts of the film help to prepare the viewer for the more surreal twists and turns of the latter parts. Hatzopoulos goes on to praise the cinematography of José Luis Alcaine as "excellent", adding that "there are many beautiful shots, while the blue color that prevails in the second half is the right touch to put us in the surreal world of the film." Hatzopoulos expects that Passion will divide audiences.

TURKISH 'PASSION' POSTER & STILLSAND 'PASSION' TO PLAY OFFICIAL DANISH FILM FESTIVAL IN APRILThanks to Lindsey for pointing us to a Flickr page with some terrific high-quality stills from Brian De Palma's Passion, including the Turkish poster here at left.

Meanwhile, thanks to Carsten for letting us know that Passion will screen April 17 and 21 at CPH PIX, the official Danish film festival that takes place in Copenhagen from April 11 through April 24.

In Harmony Korine's Spring Breakers, which was shot by frequent Gaspar Noe cinematographer Benoit Debie, James Franco's plays a meth dealer who, while showing his new spring break girls around his crib, boasts about having everything he needs, including Brian De Palma's Scarface on repeat. Here are some of the reviews:

Michael Wilmington, Movie City News"It may be the apotheosis or culmination of all the Korines: a picture that starts off, as many have noted, like an arty Girls Gone Wild video, inflated to Hieronymus Boschian or Pieter Brughelian Beach Party proportions, and ends up doing a riff on the Al Pacino-Brian De Palma 1983 Scarface, mashed up into Charlie‘s Angels gone homicidal...

"A lot of Spring Breakers is shot and shaped like old-style soft-core porn show– even to the old cheapo porn trick of repeating some scenes and lines over and over. It’s blended with what plays like a teen-slanted ‘83 Scarface pastiche. But, as long as Franco is on screen, it’s a good movie, and there’s also something crazily compelling about the scenes of that huge outdoor dance-a-thon. The ending is beyond ridiculous, and not funny enough to save things. And the four femme stars could have used better parts and better lines, but what the hell. The movie‘s credibility vanishes after the restaurant robbery scene anyway, which is shot flashily, in a Gun Crazy-style single take. But as the man says, who needs credibility? Just pretend…"

David Edelstein, Vulture"Spring Breakers switches gears midway through with the arrest of these bacchanalians (bikinis behind bars!) and the arrival of James Franco as a flamboyant meth dealer with silver teeth and red-tinted cornrows. He watches them go before a judge and, enraptured, bails them out. 'Sprang break … Sprang break … ' he intones, attempting to lull us with his sexy outlaw incantations. In his lavish manse, he shows off his arsenal, invokes Scarface, and says, 'This is the fuckin’ American dream, y’all.' Every one of Franco’s lines could be the prelude to a rap song too moronic for airplay. 'Sprang break ... Sprang break … ' I wanted to spring-break his silver teeth, but at least he’s more committed here than in his other movie on screens now, Oz the Great and Powerful — a Disney production."

Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out New York"Already swollen with girl-on-girl flirtation, criminal fantasy and naive dreaminess, the movie explodes into Tampa Bay–set skankitude, where our leads are never out of bikinis, even when flung in jail for trashing a hotel room. They’re bailed out by Alien (James Franco, more alive than ever in the film’s only actual performance), a cornrowed, heavily armed wanksta rapper who nakedly desires them for his posse.

"It all plays out in a final flourish of DayGlo Scarface wish fulfillment, and you can’t really believe what you’re watching. Alien—and Korine—tell us it’s the American dream come true, and even if you resist going there with them, the have-your-cake-and-fling-it-too stupidity is breathtaking. It takes some kind of cracked artistry to put coeds in hot-pink ski masks and have them twirl around to a Britney Spears ballad toting machine guns. Spring Breakers is either an inspired satire of the youth movie or the most irresponsible comedy mainstream Hollywood will never make. The bros in your crowd will call it rad—and radical it is."

"Alien laps them right up. At his crib, where bongs and blow are plentiful and Al Pacino's Scarface plays on a continuous loop, the coeds live the dream. Violence looms in the form of Archie (Gucci Mane), Alien's gangsta enemy. No sweat. When Alien isn't going down on a gun barrel in a homoerotic domination game, he sits at his poolside piano and croons Britney Spears ballads to the girls, who wear pink ski masks and dance around waving AK-47s."

Katie Calautti, Comic Book Resources"Sure, it has the aesthetic of a Girls Gone Wild video mashed up with Scarface (and there’s certainly a portion of the film’s audience that will be all too happy to take it at that face value), but deep beyond its epic one-liners, brazen nudity, omnipresent drug use and stylized scenes of criminal activity, there’s a core that reveals an all-too-terrifying truth about the desensitization of youth and the moral quandaries it presents...

"That is to say, after watching Spring Breakers, you’ll have Britney Spears and Skrillex stuck in your head on a loop, you’ll quote (and re-quote, and re-quote) James Franco’s dialogue (his crooning repetition of 'spring breeeeeeak' will haunt your nightmares), you’ll never watch High School Musical the same way again, you’ll feel the crushing urge to view Scarface on repeat, you’ll realize you’re inadequately prepared (abdominally speaking) for swimsuit season, and you’ll suffer the after-effects of an onslaught of so much perverse and perverted imagery that you’ll want to disinfect yourself by taking a bath in (and swallowing shots of) tequila."